A vacant house in west Vancouver is not where one would expect to find historic photos of Cochrane…but they would be wrong.
Vancouver resident and proprietor of the website historicphotos.ca Dudley Booth came across several historic photos when his father passed them on to him when he was 14 years old.
“In 1946 my father had been hired to remove litter from a vacant house in west Vancouver,” Booth said via email. “Among the litter destined for the land fill was a small wood case about the size and shape of a briefcase. My father opened it and discovered it was packed tightly with negatives.”
Several years later, Booth took the negatives to the Vancouver Maritime Museum, where the curator informed him that the photos were by a famous English photographer named Cyril R. Littlebury, who died in Vancouver in 1936.
Booth said the collection of photos was found in Littlebury’s father’s vacated house, and had they been discovered by anyone other than his father, they may have been discarded.
Within this collection of 1,000 photos, several are of Cochrane in 1921.
“Hopefully displaying these photos of Cochrane might bring to light other old photos that should be preserved,” said Booth, whose collection has spurred a lot of attention, including the National Gallery in Ottawa. Booth said he also has photos of Airdrie’s Main Street in 1921
More of Booth’s photos of Cochrane can be viewed on his website under the heading ‘Littlebury.’
